


Are We Too Old For This?

by Big_Edies_Sun_Hat



Category: Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator
Genre: Damien is insufferable, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Idiots in Love, M/M, Robert is creepy, Slow Burn, and i love them, but eventually somebody gets thrown up against a wall, hidden Rifftrax joke, it takes a while
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-02-29 17:42:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18783040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Big_Edies_Sun_Hat/pseuds/Big_Edies_Sun_Hat
Summary: This kind of thing was charming at first, but it was also a sign of someone who was liable to go out and point his phone at the sky to record an angry video about the chemtrails over his house. In this day and age, Damien knew, there was no good reason to spend his limited spare time with a dangerous idiot.That was, of course, exactly what he eventually began to do.[Complete]





	1. Land Reclamation

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason I took a notion to write my first fic in years playing the whole game and reading two of the comics months ago. I haven't been in the fandom since or played any DLC, so I am probably behind some events. Pretend they didn't happen. This follows what would occur if Dadsona paired off with someone else.

“... But I gave him one more chance. I said to him, _are you a God-damn vampire_? To which he basically told me yes. Because what he said at that point was, ‘Hey, calm down.’ Now, that's what a _vampire_ says ...”

 

                                                            —Andy Daly, “The Wit and Wisdom of The West with Dalton Wilcox”

 

“The difference between this house and the rest of the street comes down to land reclamation,” Damien said, waving a hand towards the street. “This land was originally cranberry bog, you see. Real estate developers sold it off in lots to immigrant families in the early twentieth century, but most of them could never develop the property. Then after the war, other companies bought the lots for pennies on the dollar, filled and graded, and created a Levittown-type development with ranch and International-style houses on the cul-de-sac model, but they must not have been able to buy _this_ house, which was built by one of the original purchasers, who was able to make something of these particular lots and build a small Second Empire—which was actually out of style at the time, I don't understand it, but there’s no accounting for taste.”

This was initially greeted with the silence it deserved.

“Is that right,” said Robert, who was leaning on the fence. He had done nothing to deserve this monologue except to say to Damien, “Nice place. It's, uh, it's _different_.” Damien realized he had forgotten himself.

“Yes,” he said, embarrassed. “Well. Anyway. I’m so sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” said Robert.

“I do tend to go on,” said Damien.

“Yeah,” said Robert, “you do.”

After a brief silence, he added,

“So go on.”

“I, uh ... What was I saying? Oh. I was finished.”

“Okay.” Robert shrugged. “See you later.”

With this, he turned and walked away.

This was not any particular insult. That was how Robert left places; he got bored and he walked away. Damien simply shook his head. He was certain that he would, in fact, see Robert later, whether he wanted to or not.

 

——

 

The problem was that Robert was still very sorry, in his way, and he was the kind of man who expressed regret by showing up and doing things he was not asked to do. He would turn up without a word when Damien was bedding down the garden or clearing away fallen branches. “I'll take this,” he would say, not waiting to be asked; then, when what needed doing was done, he would turn around and leave the yard without a word. Damien would thank him kindly as he went, drawing on a lifetime’s worth of experience in being extremely nice to suspicious people.

He would not ask him to stay, of course. Damien was, after all, a busy man, and to his knowledge, so was Robert, although _what_ he was busy with was, frankly, a little tragic.

Damien had certainly read Charles Fort when he was younger, and he remembered how much wonder and comfort was in the idea of a world just beyond this one, full of creatures and possibilities. But that was no excuse for a grown man to believe in the undead _and_ in ghosts _and_ that a strange light had followed him down Route 1 at three in the morning and left him parked on the side of the road at dawn, “missing time.” According to Mary, Robert had, at one time or another, talked about all of this.

This kind of thing was charming at first, but it was also a sign of someone who was liable to go out and point his phone at the sky to record an angry video about the chemtrails over his house. That was going to be decidedly less charming. And that was the _nice_ option. God knew what else he was capable of believing. In this day and age, Damien knew, there was no good reason to spend his limited spare time with a dangerous idiot.

This was, of course, exactly what he eventually began to do.

 

——

 

_hey_

_wyd_

These texts arrived from “Maybe: Robert Small” at nearly eight o’clock at night. As it so happened, what Damien was doing was waiting by the phone, just like a single girl in the 1960s, except that instead of waiting on a man he was waiting on the next in a series of interminable emails among his supervisors about a problem he might or might not be able to help with and _definitely_ could not help with until the morning. In the meantime, he felt he ought to stay alert and stay part of the team.

_movie coming on & you need to see it_

_it’s Barry Lyndon_

_that’s the name not a guy_

_it’s groundbreaking in its use of actual candlelight to evoke the Victorian era on film_

This was profoundly irritating. Damien didn’t want to make an excuse, or indeed to answer at all. But if he didn’t, Robert was going to go around thinking that _Barry Lyndon_ took place in the Victorian era. It was _Georgian_. That meant it was a full two kings before—

_come over or don’t_

Damien had already seen the movie. It was getting late. He had a job to do, or at least he had a job where they would complain if they didn’t magically have him whenever they wanted. He didn’t need to go anywhere. He checked his email again, and then, in two minutes, again.

Five minutes later, Damien put on his evening coat and left.

Betsy welcomed him with joy; Robert did not get off the couch. The door was unlocked, but he had not cleaned up for company, or for anything at all. His greeting and his hospitality consisted of the words, “Box wine’s in the fridge.” The movie had already started.

Damien sensed immediately that now was not the time to talk about the differences between the Victorian and Georgian era. He carefully sat at the far edge of the couch, and was quiet.

Robert, he eventually learned, did not talk during movies, unless he talked _to_ the movies—not to the characters, but to the movies _themselves_ , for doing something he disapproved of (“Nice day-for-night there, Jesus.” “Thank God you actually filmed him driving up and parking at the scene, else how would we know how _anyone got there_.”)

But this was a good movie, and therefore Robert had nothing to say about it, or about anything else. He didn’t speak again until the credits had spooled to the end, when he said pointedly, “‘Night.”

It was, all in all, a strangely restful way to spend two hours. The next week, Robert summoned him again, and so he went.

 

——

 

“He’s a miserable fuck when he’s sober,” Mary had said. “Which, you know, same, so. He’s fun when he’s fun, and he’s not when he’s not, so I stay away then, you know? He’s seen some shit. I mean, he makes _up_ shit that he saw, but what he doesn’t talk about is what’s true. He lost his wife a few years back, and, uh ...” She studied her manicured nails, rattled them against the table.

“It was bad. And he—he didn’t _make good choices_ after that, God love him. So he’s a fucking mess, but he’s real people, you know? Anyway, I told him not to bother you with his bullshit. He listens to me. Sometimes.”

Damien decided not to tell her that Robert hadn’t listened to her about that at all. He didn’t care to have to tell her that there was one more person in her life who wasn’t listening to her.

He had no idea why Robert listened to _him_ —if in fact he did. Robert didn’t say much himself, but he also didn’t stare at Damien as if he’d been hit with a paint can, which Damien knew very well was how most people reacted to hearing him talk. So Robert was, in his way, good company, or at least he would be until the day he decided to hate Damien, which might come at any time.

 

——

 

“I hate this damned thing,” Damien told Robert as he poured fresh oil into the engine of his aging Volvo. Robert was hanging back; he had stopped on his way past, possibly because he did not really think Damien knew how to change his own oil. For some reason, people found that hard to believe.

“Looks like a piece of shit,” said Robert. “Gonna trade it up?”

“No,” said Damien. “It is. But I will not spend a single unnecessary minute of this one given life thinking about cars. For now, I just need to drive Lucien anywhere he needs to go. It’s not that he doesn’t have friends who’d do it. He _does_. That’s the problem. Every ride he takes with me is not with them. I know how boys drive. I’m not that old,” he muttered.

“His mom’s no help?”

Damien hesitated. He had really asked that.

“She’s not in the picture?”

Robert was leaning aside, snapping apart a small stick, not looking at anything in particular until Damien caught his eye.

“It’s just me,” Damien said, very carefully.

“Oh,” Robert said, and then, a moment later: “ _Oh_.”

Damien quietly cleaned off his hands with Gojo.

“Well, I’ll be damned. I didn’t—I never would’ve—Wow. I mean, that’s great. That’s—that’s amazing,” he added hastily.

Damien had hoped this would never come up. He was afraid that Robert would blame his existence on chemicals in the municipal water supply. Instead, he looked genuinely impressed. That was something, at least.

“Anyway,” said Robert, and cleared his throat.

“Anyway,” said Damien, and closed the hood.

 

——

 

Damien decided not to be surprised if he never heard from Robert again, but two days later, Robert demanded via text that he come over and see _The Thing_. Damien promptly explained that no, he would under no circumstances be doing that, but it was very nice to be asked.

That was something that was beginning to worry him: exactly how nice it was to be asked, and for whom.

Robert always sat on the opposite end of his couch, one full cushion away from Damien, as per the unspoken law of man. But sometimes he raised his hazel-gold eyes in the darkness, watching Damien over the edge of a glass or sidelong, not saying anything, _aggressively_ not saying anything, and ...

It surely wasn’t—no, surely it wasn’t. And even if: _no_. Absolutely not. Not in a thousand years.

Damien was so certain that it was a terrible idea that he thought about it over and over, occasionally at work, out of nowhere. Once he accidentally broke a pencil in half just from thinking about how terrible it would be.

 

——

 

A week later:

_hey count floyd_

_I want to see the skeletons in your basement_

_when can you show me_

Damien sighed.

_you said I could cmon_

That was fair enough. He had told Robert about how he cleaned small animals in his basement and articulated the bones, and he had even said, “You really should come see how it works sometime,” although he hadn’t _meant_ it. People pretended to mean things like that, and other people pretended to believe them, and that was how society worked; did Robert not understand? No, of course he didn’t.

There was, Damien told himself firmly, a very clear line to draw here: do not have this man in your house, and especially do not bring him to your basement, where no one could hear anything that happened.

 

——

 

“What I truly want in life right now,” Damien said, “is some dermestid beetles for the bones. But there’s no keeping them alive in a basement like this. They need heat. They’re colony creatures, and they can’t keep themselves warm enough year-round in this climate. And God forbid they live upstairs. There’s no keeping live insects without escapes. Have you ever had a feeder population?”

“I, uh,” said Robert, scratching the back of his neck, “I’ve bought bait.”

“Then you understand the principle, broadly speaking. Insects penetrate surfaces. It’s what all of them are born to do, more or less, and of course a dermestid beetle is harmless to _us_ , because we aren’t dead yet, but when you have a colony one will escape eventually, and people are unreasonable. They think they’re looking at a German cockroach or a house centipede, and at that point there is really no way for an explanation to improve things.”

Robert picked up an owl’s skull from a table laden with whitened bones and peered into its sockets.

“So,” he said, “if I brought you something that I— _found_ sometime, could you clean it for me? I don’t have anything _now_. But I’m always looking for—specimens. Not on the market, I mean. Just locally. In the woods. Interesting remains.”

“What species?” Damien gently took the skull away. “There are laws about handling remains that are _too_ interesting.”

“Oh, no,” he said. “There’s no laws about what I’m looking for. At least, no public laws.”

“Robert.”

“What?”

“You’re talking about Bigfoot, aren’t you.”

“I didn’t say I was, and I didn’t say I wasn’t. I don’t know _what_ —”

Damien briefly covered his face.

“Do you know how many calories it would take to support an eight-foot-tall hominid every day? What kind of ecosystem can support megafauna without a complex food web on the macro scale? Which you will _not_ find in a second-growth birch and pine forest of the kind this county has. It’s picked over. Bears can hardly manage to live around here, let alone—”

“You know, it’s got to be exhausting for you.”

Damien stopped short.

“What?”

“Knowing every fucking thing in the universe,” said Robert. “Does it get old? It would to me.”

“Oh, for the love of God.”

“I’m serious! Do you not remember how to keep an open mind? You must have once, God knows. Look at this place.” Robert leaned on the table, gesturing vaguely with his other hand.

“Don’t you know what the darkness is? _You_? Come on. You know. You used to, anyway. Didn’t you?”

Damien almost opened his mouth to say something about epistemology and the incompatibility of such a worldview with full participation in modern society, then didn’t. Robert was leaning on the table just slightly across him, so that his right arm brushed Damien’s. Robert smelled like smoke and beer and bad decisions, and it made Damien feel young again, almost younger than he had ever actually managed to be.

“Yes, but ... it’s not as if ...”

“Go on,” said Robert eventually.

He tried.

“The point is ... you can’t just ... _decide_ that you want things to be true. There has to be a, a ... Well, never mind. I don’t have the, uh. The vocabulary.”

“You don’t? Really?”

Damien met his eyes, which was the worst decision he could possibly have made. He had meant to say something to get them both out of the basement and into fresh, disinfecting sunlight, and he had suddenly forgotten how. He felt the slight warmth of Robert shifting closer.

“Well,” Robert said, in a new, lower tone. “How about that.”

The table creaked slightly as Robert eased his weight off it.

“Cat got your tongue,” he said. “You mad at me? I’m just messing with you some. You’re smart. You know some amazing shit. I just don’t think you know everything.”

“Well. Of course. But.”

Robert leaned in, his voice warm as wood smoke.

“You’re out of breath. You want to sit down?”

Damien decided to handle this like an adult.

“Listen,” he said, “are you—”

Robert took his chin in hand and kissed him as if he had been doing it every day for months. It was much gentler than he would have expected, testing and soft, tasting of hops. It was, Damien knew, a terrible and avoidable mistake, and it was also the most that anyone had wanted from him in years.

He kissed back carefully, then much less carefully, sliding his arms around Robert’s chest as Robert pushed his calloused fingers along the lines of his jaw and his neck. He took the clip from Damien’s hair and tossed it to the table, then pulled his long, fine hair out of its knot with both hands. Damien was becoming very hazy, but he was still aware of two things: one, that he was alone in a basement with an alcoholic conspiracy theorist who almost certainly had a knife, and two, that he could not make himself leave.

At last, Robert allowed him to catch his breath, and Damien managed to say,

“You’re ... You _are_ supposed to ask before you just ...”

“You are?” Robert grinned. “'K. Do you wanna do it again, or what?”

Damien did. Before his better judgment could arrive, he thrust his hands into Robert’s thick, dark hair and kissed him with pure desperation. Robert took his waist in his hands and pulled the both of them backwards, onto the couch by the wall.

Ever since he could afford better, Damien had refused to have this couch in the house. It was the kind of couch that no one had willingly bought since 1978, orange-and-brown paisley. If he was trying to be a teenager again, then sitting on this couch astride an unstable, poorly shaven man, as he was just now doing, was a painfully accurate reconstruction.

Robert pulled briefly away from kissing Damien, then buried his face in his neck. Damien cried out softly at the suddenness of his teeth.

“You taste good,” muttered Robert, mostly to himself, as if it was something he had wanted to know; and the guttural satisfaction of his words made Damien weak. Robert’s stubble brushed against the side of his throat. He drew in a short, deep breath, as if he had been stabbed.

“Robert,” he said, soft and pleading, his neck arched, aware that this was not what one would call a position of strength. He did not know what to say, only that it was important to say something, and he was failing utterly simply because he could feel this man’s mouth against his pulse, and he was going to die from it.

“What’s that? You like this?” Robert eased back, running a lock of Damien’s hair through his fingers. “This is good?”

It wasn’t a taunt or a line of dialogue in some scene he'd played before. It was a real question.

“... Yes. It’s just ... not wise.”

Robert simply waited, smiling.

“You aren’t safe to be around and you believe in mythical creatures and you’re _drunk_.”

Robert considered this briefly and with due respect.

“ _A_ , no,” he said, “ _b_ , yes; but _c_ , not drunk. I mean, a beer and a half, at four percent? That’s basically Coke. But, I mean, _safe_ —” He raised his hands, palms open. “You want me to go? I’m serious. I wouldn’t fuck around about that. Say the word.”

He was indeed serious. Damien could feel him shifting his weight, ready to push away from him. He dropped his eyes.

“No. Don’t go.”

“Didn’t think so.”

Robert pulled Damien’s shirt free at the waist. He unbuttoned the lowest buttons and ran rough, appraising hands over his bare abdomen, his ribcage, the muscles of his back. Damien sighed with relief. Whatever this man was, that was the first touch he had felt there in many years, since before—

Robert fumbled heavily at the back of his binder. Damien froze.

“How does this come off? It’s not like a—”

“ _No_. Not now. Just—just let me—”

In a sudden, panicked impulse, he leaned forward and bit Robert’s neck, fixed his teeth in the cords of his throat and slid his hands underneath his T-shirt, almost bitter with the drive to do it. Did he want someone to bite him and suck him dry? Then Damien could do that. He could do it very well, too, well enough to forget that, in a different and extremely important sense, he did not know what the hell was going on here.

“Holy God, you really can—That’s—” Robert drew in air between his teeth. “Good. That’s—more. More.”

Damien lifted Robert’s shirt and stared through narrow eyes at his rising, falling abdomen. He was covered with whorls of soft salt-and-pepper hair, and what he lacked in definition was present in plain, raw strength. Damien felt a deep and terrible ache at the sight of him. He shut his eyes and, so gently that it could almost be mistaken, bit Robert’s left pectoral muscle. Robert gave a strangled gasp. His hands instantly tightened on Damien’s thighs, so hard that it hurt; then he seized Damien’s hands, freeing them from the skin of his chest so that he could slip them into the waistband of his jeans.

“I’ll take anything you give me,” Robert said. Damien was suddenly cold.

When someone tells you who they are, it is important to believe them. He did not doubt what he had just heard. Robert would absolutely take whatever he could. Damien was, by nature, a private, upright and sensitive man who would absolutely never go down on a strange neighbor in the basement of his family home, and yet here he was with his hands on Robert’s zipper, having intended to do just that. He felt sick, and he felt angry; and it was at this precise moment that the phone chose to ring.

“Oh, for _Christ’s_ sake—”

Robert protested as Damien pushed himself away and almost ran to the desk to catch it.

“You cannot be fucking serious. You’re going to get that?”

“Yes. That’s the _school’s_ ringtone. Be quiet,” he snapped.

To his credit, Robert was. He watched carefully as Damien turned away from him and spoke.

“Yes, hello. This is he. Is everything all right? Thank God. What ... oh. _What?_ Oh, no. No, that’s ... that’s not funny, is it. No. Yes. I’m so sorry. We’ll handle this. He’ll apologize. It ... of course. I’ll be right there. And again, I am _so_ —oh. She hung up.”

Robert pulled himself to his feet and began to rearrange himself.

“Everything’s okay up there?”

“Oh, yes, the school is fine, my son has just—I can’t explain right now. You wouldn’t believe it. _I_ don’t believe it,” he added. “What it amounts to is that he’s suspended for the day, and now I have to leave. And so do you.”

Robert rubbed the side of his neck, scowling.

“Fine,” he muttered. “I guess I’ll go sit in the ice chest outside the 7-11.”

“Good. You do that.”

Damien paused, then reached out and traced a mark on Robert’s neck with his thumb.

“Actually, you do need some ice. Keep it on your skin here. And here. Rub it with your fingertips. That should help your—discoloration.”

Robert touched the marks himself.

“This comes up a lot for you, doesn’t it?”

“Get out of my house,” said Damien gently.

“Right. I'll leave you to it,” said Robert, and saw himself out through the cellar door.

 


	2. Another Glass of Unsweet Tea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The traditional Misunderstanding Chapter.

“Lucien. … _Lucien_.”

“What.”

“Is this how you treat your friends?”

“I said it was a _joke_.”

“That is not what I asked you. I said, is this how—"

Lucien slammed the car window with his fist.

“People have fucking jokes with their friends, Dad! Anyway, what do you know about ‘how you treat your friends’? How many do you _have_?” 

—— 

This was just what Lucien was like now. He said or did something absolutely vicious, sulked all afternoon, then did something to make up for it, without being asked, or asking. On this particular occasion, he made dinner, cleaned the kitchen, then refused to leave his room for the rest of the night.

Damien had once been afraid that life would spite him by making his son the kind of boy who wore polo shirts and read Ayn Rand. He had been delighted to find out that this was not at all who Lucien was going to be. But he still did not know who Lucien _was_. Figuring that out was a full-time job.

Then, of course, there was his actual full-time job; there was his volunteering, and on top of that, there was his Aesthetic, and between them they made for a third full-time job. Damien was tired, and tired people make mistakes, and if any man was a mistake, it was Robert Small.

——

He did not hear from Robert again for three days, until the man somehow materialized while he was trying to get his trellis roses wrapped for the winter. Robert lurked for a while against the fence, then rapped on it as if he hadn’t been visible the whole time.

“Hey,” said Robert.

Damien nodded.

“Shit looks heavy,” said Robert. “I’ll give you a hand with that.”

“No, it’s much easier than it looks,” said Damien, but Robert had already lifted the latch on the fence gate and let himself in.

“Look, I meant—All right. Fine. Hold the canes while I tie them, will you?”

The climbing rose canes were covered in long, brittle thorns. Robert, who had a heavy, thick jacket and heavy, thick hands, did not hesitate to take them in his arms and hold them while Damien tied them with twine, then pulled burlap around them.

Finally, Robert said, in a low, rough voice,

“There. You good?

“Yes,” said Damien. “I … I really was almost finished out here.”

Robert leaned close in a plausibly deniable way, as if to share some kind of state secret, and spoke. The scent of old leather, sawdust, and whisky was warm on his skin, even in the cold.

“You, uh, you got any time on your hands tonight?”

Damien felt Robert’s fingertips lightly curling into his palm, tracing upward to his wrist. He was suddenly aware that he was biting his lip, and it made him furious.

“Listen. I am _not_ just _available_ —”

“Right,” said Robert, soft and close. “Right, exactly, I get it. You’re a busy man. I am too. I’ll just come right out and tell you—” he adjusted his stance so that his breath was in Damien’s hair, his shoulders against his chest—“I bet you’re a fucking ride and a half. I want you to come over sometime. Give me an hour. Nobody needs to know. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

Damien exhaled heavily. He struggled with an answer.

“I am not a _ride_. That,” he said, “is not the kind of thing I just do.”

Robert grinned. His eyes gleamed in the dying light.

“You could’ve fooled me.”

“I was making a mistake,” hissed Damien. “I need more from—I need something civilized. Slow. Conversations. Dinner. That kind of thing. Do you understand?”

Robert scoffed.

“What are we, in high school? You want me to go explain my intentions to your parents, or what?”

“They’re dead,” said Robert.

In the middle distance, the vague hum of passing cars rose and fell. Robert dropped his hands and stepped away.

“Oh,” he said. “Oh. Well. That wasn’t funny then, was it.”

“No.”

“Ah. Right.” Robert scratched his scalp. “Jesus, I’m an asshole. Look, I’m sorry—”

None of this had been funny, not at all. This was why Damien began to giggle, and why he could not stop. At last, he grabbed Robert’s shoulder and laughed so helplessly that Robert, uncertainly, began to laugh too.

“Anyway,” said Damien cheerfully, “no. Unless—well. As you say, you’re a busy man.”

“Yeah,” said Robert. “Got it. Just thought it was worth a shot. No hard feelings?” He offered his hand. Damien hesitated, then rolled his eyes.

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said Damien, as he shook it, “who could possibly imagine why.” 

—— 

Robert seemed to forget what had happened as quickly as he surely would have if Damien had actually gone home with him. Instead, now, he was friendly, which was to say that he nodded to acknowledge Damien’s existence instead of glaring, and spoke aloud on occasion. They even carried on a conversation once in the Coffee Spoon. Granted, it was in the form of an argument about whether the Bridgewater Triangle was a genuine phenomenon or an attempt to create a giant tourist trap out of three spooky stories and a Lovecraft connection, but it was a conversation, and Robert seemed to enjoy it.

And that, in all probability, would have been that, if not for the potholder on the stove.

—— 

One morning before work, Damien opened the door at 7:45, more or less as usual, to find Betsy shoved into his arms. It was in his nature to automatically pick up any small animal that he could, so he only stumbled a little. Betsy immediately covered his face with kisses.

“Look,” Robert said, “I hate to ask, so I’m not asking. I’m begging. You’ve got to take care of her for a little while. I’m going away. I’ll pay you back, I just, I have to go now. And no”—he raised a hand—“it’s not jail. It’s not even court-ordered. It’s just now or fucking never and I have to go and I have to get some shit in order before I do.”

“Where are you going?”

“Gonna go dry out.” He wiped his face. “I don’t know where for sure. I’ve been on the phone, been trying to figure it out.”

“I see,” said Damien. “I see. That’s—that’s very wise. But … can’t Mary help?”

“You’d put this little girl in that house? With that family?”

“Oh. Well. When you put it like that—”

“And another thing,” said Robert. “Mary’s not on board with this. She thinks I’m being a little bitch. She _said_ that. Look, I gotta go. I got more calls to make. Please do this. Please don’t send her to a kennel. I don’t trust anybody here plus, God, I’m gonna be broke soon, please don’t—”

“All right,” said Damien gently. “All right. All right. How long will you be gone?”

“However long the insurance says,” he said. “You’re not gonna need more dog food.” 

—— 

It was true; he did not need to buy more dog food. Robert was home after a week.

“Yes, I called him that,” Mary told him later, in a slack moment at the shelter. “I said that because he _does_ this. He’s done it twice at least. He doesn’t actually go to rehab. He just disappears. I think he slept in his truck last time. I’ve told him—I said, people die trying to quit alone. He makes an excuse about the money or getting back to work, then he says he can handle it, and then—”

She sighed, then gave his shoulder a brief squeeze.

“Honey, I know you,” she said. “You like to _do_ things for people. But he’s got to fix this shit up himself.”

 ——

“What on earth happened here?”

“Left a potholder on the stove. Left it on. Passed out on the couch.”

The galley kitchen in Robert’s den was painted black with soot from the stovetop to the ceiling. The counter was covered with white dust from the empty fire extinguisher that lay on the floor. Something unspeakable had happened to a plastic bowl or colander, whichever it had been. Betsy was straining to run to Robert, but Damien did not put her down.

“Are you _staying_ here? Everything smells like smoke! Do you need—”

Robert waved a hand.

“It just looks bad. There’s no structural damage. I’ll fix it up. Lucky as hell, though. I was a dipshit not to call 911, but I had one of these on my hands, and I just did all I could think to do.” He prodded the fire extinguisher. “Thank God that was all it took.”

Betsy burst free and launched herself toward Robert. He picked her up.

“Thing like this, it concentrates you. It makes you think of the most important thing. Which was, you know, Betsy was in here, and she was barking, and … Anyway. So I needed to get away for a while. Clear my head, make sure this can’t happen again.”

Behind the natural shade of his skin, Robert looked ashen, drained. What Damien intended to do now was to say _I see. Good luck_ , and leave. What he heard himself say was,

“What are you going to eat? When will you have a kitchen again? For God’s sake, you lunatic. What have you done? Come over for dinner. Just come take something away, if you’d rather. Everything in these top cabinets is ruined, isn’t it. Yes. Have you been shopping since you were back? Your furniture is going to smell like death and plastic forever, you know that. The stovetop is the first thing. I’d have worn a different shirt if I had known, I’ll just roll up—where is your broom closet? Nothing’s happened to the dustpan, has it? Good—”

—— 

Winter came in its own good time. It was not what it had been in the ‘90s, but then, to Damien, nothing was. The snow was light and did not pile up, but the cold bit hard.

Robert had let him get started on cleaning, working quietly alongside him, but he refused to come over for dinner, then or later. Eventually, though, he appeared again at Damien’s fence, less drawn, still too pale, and faintly damp, as if he never quite stopped sweating.

“I’m fine,” he said, in answer to three questions. “Betsy’s fine. I’m eating okay. I, uh, I wanted to ask you something. Can I … can I come over sometime? I mean, not to see _you_. Not to take up your time, that is. Just sit in your library, keep to myself. Be quiet for a while. My place just, just kind of sucks to be in right now.”

“It still smells like melted plastic, doesn’t it?”

“It’s not that. Well, it does, but it’s not that.” Robert rubbed his thumb against his eyebrow. “I just remember not remembering a lot of shit in there. The walls are closing in. That’s all.”

“Well, God forbid you come to see _me_ ,” said Damien, “but if all you want is to keep to yourself …”

—— 

Several days later:

“Dad. … _Dad_.”

“I’m listening.”

Lucien gripped Damien’s shoulder and whispered. His facial expression generally did not change for weeks at a time, but now he looked genuinely frightened.

“There’s a man _asleep_ in the _library_.”

“Oh, yes, of course.” Damien, who had been working from home, turned back to his laptop. “That’s Mr. Small. He’s just resting, don’t worry.”

“Is he a friend of yours?” Lucien was oddly horrified by this. “I thought he broke in!”

“He’s our neighbor. He had a house fire. Have some compassion,” said Damien mildly.

“Okay,” said Lucien. “Okay, but I kn—I’ve seen him. He’s that creepy guy from the coffee shop.”

“Lucien,” said Damien, still untroubled, “ _I_ am the creepy guy from the coffee shop, or any other place I enter or leave. If you want to judge someone, you can judge me. I’m quite used to it.”

“No! I mean, no,” said Lucien, “it’s just that I saw him in there trying to tell Mr. Vega that Shakespeare didn’t write his own plays.”

Damien nearly slammed the laptop shut.

“Did he say that?”

“Yeah. I forget who he said it was, but …”

“I’ll have a _word_ with him when he wakes up,” said Damien darkly.

“Guy’s weird. I wouldn’t believe him about stuff, just, like, in general,” said Lucien, slinking away toward the kitchen.

Damien returned to his work with a quiet vengeance and finished as quickly as he could, but by the time he shut his computer and swept into the library, Robert had gone.

——

Robert came and went silently every few days, like a cat with a neighborhood round of houses to visit. Eventually, he drove south to his family for the holidays, and came back with something more like color in his face. All he would say about it was:

“I can’t do another dry Christmas with those people. I can’t. I never want to see another glass of unsweet tea in my life.”

To this, Damien only said,

“Sit down. Stay as long as you need.”

Robert nodded. He folded up onto the davenport.

“I’m going to meetings again,” he said, after a silence. He shoved a crushed-satin throw pillow against the wooden arm and lay down, staring at the curtains.

“Damien?” he said eventually, but Damien had already left him to himself. He had gone to the basement, where he could not hear, even if Robert had shouted.

“Shit,” Robert said, then turned and crumpled himself into a ball, pressing his face into the fabric of the back of the sofa.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is it canon that Robert is a landlord? I had that idea for some reason, so I went with it.


	3. A Rock With Marks on It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winter does its best to end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> help i accidentally a novella
> 
> I promise this will be finished up shortly with the kind of chapters that were frankly the point of the whole thing to begin with

One day in February, which as usual refused to end, Mary dug her nails into Damien’s forearm and said:

“Look, you didn’t listen to me the first time I told you not to help Robert. So now you have to. Check in on that asshole for me, would you? He’s been leaving me on read for a while. His truck was gone the last time I was there. Just look? Make sure Betsy’s not in there eating his face to live?”

“What? Oh, goodness. Of course I will. He hasn’t been at my house in a week or so. He comes and goes. I thought—”

“What do you mean, ‘he comes and goes’? From your _house_?”

“Yes. He likes to sit in the library. He says it’s restful. What are you giving me that look for?”

Mary bit her top lip.

“Oh, it’s not for _you_ ,” she said. “I might kill him. But he’s got to be alive first. Just let me know, all right?”

——

Mary might have found it hard to get Robert, but Damien found him in the first place he looked, which was through the den window. He was lying on his couch, staring at the ceiling, with a used ashtray on the coffee table. Damien knocked at the window. Robert did not move, but he did seem to be breathing, so that would have to do.

As Damien walked away, his phone rang with a text:

_hey dont just fuck off_

_you know where the outside key is_

_get back here_

——

Robert’s house was considerably less terrible than it had been the last time Damien saw it. The kitchen was clean, and some of the furniture had been replaced. There was still a general gloom, as well as a nearly visible haze of marijuana. Robert raised himself up on his elbows.

“I have not, before you ask,” he said, “been drinking.”

“I can see that,” said Damien, standing over the couch, arms folded. “And I can certainly say that it no longer smells like burnt plastic in here.”

“It’s legal,” said Robert. “Dispensary. What did you want?”

“We _worried_ about you. People do that, you know. Has something gone wrong?”

Robert looked up at him with an unreadable smile. He tapped the back of the couch with his fingers. Damien felt a brief urge to take his hand, but ignored it.

“Look at you,” Robert said, his voice slow. “You know what I should have done?”

“No,” said Damien carefully. “What’s happened? What’s the matter?”

He blinked slowly, like a cat, then swung his legs off the couch.

“Well. Uh,” he said. “Actually. Sit down. Let me show you something.”

Robert pulled out his phone and scrolled through his photos as Damien sat uneasily on the far edge of the couch.

“That’s my girl. Val. She just got engaged.”

“Why, she’s lovely,” said Damien. “I didn’t know you had a daughter.”

“I didn’t know she had a girlfriend.” Robert tossed the phone onto the coffee table. “She didn’t tell me. She doesn’t tell me anything. I found out secondhand.”

“Oh, no. Oh, dear. I’m so sorry.”

“No, no,” said Robert, staring at the phone. “I deserve it.”

After a moment, Damien stood up and said,

“I’ll make tea.”

“What?” Robert looked up. “I fuckin’—I tell you something like that, and you say _tea_?”

“Yes, I do,” said Damien, who was already at the stove, “because I don’t know what you could possibly mean by _I deserve it_ , and I want you to tell me. And I want you to take your time, and that means you’ll be thirsty. Do you take sugar?”

“God damn it. … Yes.”

——

Damien liked to talk. He had never meant to become a man who spoke in monologues, but he had. He wanted to tell people everything he knew and everything he wanted them to know, everything that was amazing about the past and the world around them. The skill it had taken him a long time to learn was knowing when to say nothing at all. That was the one he was using now.

Robert had finally decided to talk—about his daughter, about the accident, about everything. Whether it was because he had years’ worth of things left unsaid or because he was still slightly high, he seemed unable to stop, or to decide what kind of secrets he might actually want to keep.

“… wouldn’t have ended up doing it if he hadn’t told me the radio was broken. Conveniently fucking broken. You know I believed that? I didn’t even try to look at it. It was so … But I wanted it to be true. I wanted an excuse. I wanted … ”

Robert rubbed his forehead with the heel of his hand. Damien said nothing; he only rested a hand on Robert’s forearm, and thought, not for the first time, about how much he hated Joseph Christiansen.

When they’d met, Joseph had fixed his sunny blue eyes on Damien and shook his hand with such warmth and sincerity that Damien thought his flesh might crawl right off his bones. _We’re an_ affirming _congregation_ , he’d told him, smiling bright, and it was all Damien could do not to hiss through his teeth as if he were still a mall Goth in 1998. There was in fact a vampire in the neighborhood, and it was not Damien.

He was about to say something like this when he felt Robert’s hand over his own.

“You won’t tell anybody? You won’t tell Mary—I mean, she _knows_ already, God love her. But don’t tell her I told you. Don’t tell her I’m like this.”

Damien shook his head.

“Of course not. How could I ever tell anyone? Please. Trust me.”

“Yeah,” said Robert, not moving his hand, not moving his eyes. “Yeah, all right.”

——

March came with no change in the weather or the light. It was the time to start warm-weather annual seeds inside, to rake up the mud in the garden, and to ask your teenage son to think, truly _think_ about what he was going to be able to do with his life if he did not have a solid high school record to fall back on. March was never a good month for anyone.

It had not, in fact, killed Robert to talk to someone about what was bothering him, but he made himself very scarce after that. Damien did not hear from him again for weeks, although he saw the man occasionally at the side of the road, with Betsy at his heels.

What he heard from him, at last, was:

_hey_

_I got you a movie_

_youll like it_

_its called From Hell_

_come over_

——

Not many people knew that Damien, a man who was familiar with all the major trunk murders, torso murders, axe murders, unsolved mysteries, preserved corpses, beheadings, and cannibals of the past two centuries, did not like scary movies, but he had decided to be frank with Robert on this point. “Life itself,” he said, still smiling, “is an unending source of horror, and it is all we can do to bear it with dignity as it is.” How he reconciled this with his ownership of an Ed Gein screenprint that read WISCONSIN: YOU’RE AMONG FIENDS, he refused to say.

_cmon_

_rented it cause I thought youd like it_

Robert hadn’t asked Damien to come see a movie since—since, well, was it the fall? But he couldn’t just drop everything. There was ironing to do, for one thing. There was _always_ ironing for Damien to do. And he couldn’t be sure his supervisor wouldn’t call about—

_its about jack the ripper_

_its about how it turns out the freemasons did it_

Damien set the phone down and rubbed at his temples. Four more texts rang through.

_did you know that_

_it turns out the freemasons did lizzie borden too_

_I mean not her_

_but her dad and her mom_

Thirty seconds later, Robert answered his phone and heard:

“It is absolutely irresponsible to propagate the idea of Masonic conspiracies, either now or in the past, especially in regards to two crimes that are not particularly mysterious if you just take the time to understand them in light of the interplay of the nineteenth-century practice of police work and the patriarchal understanding of … You did this to me on purpose, didn’t you?”

Robert was laughing, deep and warm.

“Just fucking with you. I don’t believe that crap.”

“You—"

“Movie’s real, though, anyway. C’mon. Get over here.”

——

It was not a very good movie, but it was unexpectedly good to see Robert. The living room no longer smelled like smoke, or even like pot. Robert’s color had improved, and he had put on a little weight—just a touch, just enough so that you could see it had been missing before. He even smiled more easily, and, crucially, he was willing to hear Damien’s critical evaluations of the costuming, accents, and general historical accuracy of the movie without throwing a couch pillow.

Before he headed home, Damien said,

“You know, you don’t _have_ to try to irritate people before you ask them to spend time with you. You could just say you’d like to see me. I mean, or someone. In general.”

Robert, who for once had gotten off the couch to see him to the door, rocked a little forward, hands in his pockets. He didn’t smell like hops or whiskey anymore. There was something else, something Damien didn’t quite recognize, something with cedar in it. It was cologne. Why would he wear—

“Is that right,” said Robert.

“It is,” said Damien, his breath catching slightly. “Just ask me.”

——

“So I’m asking.”

“… What?”

It was the weekend afterward. Robert had not even said _hello_ when Damien picked up the phone. Nor had he spoken with him since.

“C’mon. I’m gonna take a drive. You wanna go see a rock with marks on it?”

“A rock with marks on it,” repeated Damien.

“Out in the woods off of Route 1. I go out there to, uh, to spend some time outdoors and think, you know, and I found this boulder that has what I think they call cup-and-ring marks on it, but I don’t know. I made a note about it. It could be ancient carvings. I wanted somebody to see.”

Damien was about to say something about how pits and ribs naturally formed on limestone boulders when they eroded away and their markings might _look_ artificial but they weren’t at all. Then he remembered what he’d said to Robert that past week, and didn’t.

“I’m asking,” said Robert again.

“Well,” said Damien. “In that case.”

——

“Look. Dames. Look at this. Val texted me.”

“That’s wonderful! … What am I looking at?”

“I ask her how she’s doing. Send her some dog pictures. She sends three emojis. What does it mean?”

“Mean? Well … there’s a blushing smile, and there are hearts …”

“You work in IT. You know the kids these days, they have a code where emojis mean shit they don’t say, and some of it’s mean or it’s nasty. Like the peaches and the raindrops. Does _this_ mean something? Something she’s not telling me? It’s hearts and a smile, right? That’s all it means?”

“Yes …”

“And that’s good?”

Damien set the phone gently back in his hand.

“Call her,” he said. “ _Ask_.”

——

“So. Can I ask you something?”

“Yes, of course, I just … oh.”

It should not, after all this time, have been a surprise to turn around and find Robert standing close and silent, his eyes amber-dark.

Robert had just been on his couch in front of the beginning of something unbearable by Werner Herzog, after the two of them had finished watching _Duck Soup_. Damien had made some excuses to leave and was just turning to the door hook to reach for his evening coat.

Now, here beside him was Robert, who could move very quietly when he wanted to. Ever since he had arrived, Damien had tried not to notice his scent, the smoke and cedar of it, clean and rich.

“Didn’t really want to watch that anyway,” said Robert. “Didn’t want to watch anything.”

Damien shut his eyes briefly and came to a decision. It was, objectively, a bad one, but life was so very short and spring was so very close and he wanted so very much to make one more bad decision in this life.

“Ask me,” said Damien.

“Kiss me,” said Robert.

——

Two minutes later, Damien pulled his hands from Robert’s hair and said drowsily,

“That was more of an order, really. Was there something you wanted to _ask_ me?”

Robert pulled him into a hard embrace, resting his head on Damien’s shoulder.

“Sit down with me?” His voice was muffled. “I’m not gonna pounce. I just want to talk to you.”

Robert set himself down in the middle of his couch, hands hanging between his knees. Damien joined him, put a cautious hand on his forearm.

“You’re a good man,” Robert said, his eyes fixed on the floor. “I want you to be happy. But on the other hand, I want you to give me another shot. Which might not add up with that. I don’t know if I ever made … anyone happy for very long. But, uh—nobody ever said I was boring.”

He took Damien’s hand in both of his.

“And I think I’ve been a jackass, like, fifty percent less on the average lately. So. If you’ll have me, I’ll ... I mean, I can’t promise to believe what you tell me to, or not make fun of your entire _deal_ sometimes, but, uh, at least you’ll know where to find me, and, well … ” He shrugged one shoulder. “I can promise just to sexually harass you and nobody else, for as long as you like.”

Damien smiled, and folded his other hand over Robert’s.

“You almost said something sweet,” he said. “I would have been so disappointed in you.”

Robert did not return his smile.

“I’m sorry. Look. I mean it. I’m asking you for something, and I don’t even know how to say what it is. Please say yes.”

Damien tried to imagine what he might see in front of him if he were not in fact a soft-hearted, infatuated idiot, which he knew very well that he was. A dry drunk with his little house, his ideas and his failures and his nightmares—but what did it matter to know that? Knowing better had nothing to do with it, and never would.

“A chance,” said Robert. “That’s it. That’s all.”

“ _Placet_ ,” said Damien, “yes, of course, yes.”

He gently threaded the fingers of their two hands together.

“I’m going to fuck this up,” said Robert.

“Yes,” said Damien, “you might. And you might not. Do you not want to know?”


	4. A Trammel of Archimedes

In early April, Damien saw his crocuses and snowdrops again, and the daffodils pushed their blunt white stems past the mulch chips. Robert came to help him unwrap the burlap from the roses and clear away the dead leaves from the last season.

“I’ll help you in the yard if you want,” he’d said to Damien, and winked. “At least this time you’ll know I’m doing it to try to get laid.”

But he did not try to do that, not that day or the next.

——

“I’m not asking you to sleep with me,” Robert had told Damien, as they sat on his couch. “I’m supposed to … not do that, right now. And just be easy for a little bit.”

“Of course,” said Damien, stroking the inside of his wrist. “Of course.”

“I mean—they say not to start a new relationship within a year of recovery, but they don’t say anything about a relationship you had for ten minutes and then completely fucked up. I think for that, it’s maybe … a couple, three weeks? What do you think?” He smiled, lopsided, soft and sad.

“I think you are going to drive me insane,” Damien said. “But not because of that.”

He kissed Robert’s forehead and stood to go.

“Take all the time you need. You know where to find me.”

“Oh, I do,” said Robert.

——

No one _told_ Mary about the two of them. How she figured these things out, God only knew.

“She says if I hurt you, they’ll never find my body,” Robert told Damien. “I said to her, look, _you’re_ not the one who knows how to strip flesh off a skeleton and render down the bones.”

Damien only smiled and lowered his eyes.

“She means well,” he said.

“For once,” said Robert.

——

Several days later:

“I want to give you something.”

“… What is it?”

“Well,” said Robert, “I don’t know.”

He stretched awkwardly, scratching his scalp, and leaned on Damien’s kitchen counter.

“See,” he said, “it’s not a _thing_ I want to give. It’s … I told you, I don’t know if you remember, but I told you … about how I take from people. About how I just _took_ from, from the guys that—And when I was married, I—”

Damien took his hand, pressed it hard. Robert did not finish his thought.

“Anyway,” he said. “I want to give you something, and I don’t know what it is. But what I actually _have_ for you, right now, is this.”

He pressed a much-used paper bag into Damien’s hands.

“I made it myself. I’m getting better at actual woodworking, now. More free time at night. Take a look.”

“You made me something? Thank you! Thank … oh. Well. This is—”

Damien held it up. It was a palm-sized cube of pine wood with a small crank in it. He turned the crank, and, accordingly, the crank turned. That appeared to be the extent of its powers.

“It’s a do-nothing,” said Robert. “Just a kind of thing you can practice on making. Not exactly a Lemarchand box or anything, but I figured out how to do it. Thought it might remind you of me.”

“This,” said Damien, “is a trammel of Archimedes.”

“What?”

“That’s what it is. It doesn’t do ‘nothing.’ It serves as an ellipsograph. Look—” Damien turned the crank again—"if you mounted a pen to the knob, it would draw a perfect oval. And I certainly couldn’t draw a perfect oval by myself. So thank you.”

Robert smiled, rare and warm and almost ashamed. Damien kissed him. It was a quick and gentle kiss, the kind that could have gone unremarked in public, but Robert slid both arms around his waist and did not let go. He rested his forehead against Damien’s.

“Could we—”

“Do you want—”

The two of them had started to speak at the same time. Then they were quiet, embarrassed, both grinning. Damien began again.

“If you’re—”

And it was at this precise moment that Robert’s phone chose to ring.

“Fuck,” said Robert, disentangling himself. “ _Fuck_. Look—I’m sorry. That’s Val’s ringtone. She never calls. I’ve got to—”

“Take it,” said Damien gladly. “Take it. Go on.”

——

“It’s a _job_ , Dad. It’s a job in music! Don’t you want me to get it? You always—”

Damien took off his glasses and rubbed the spot between his eyebrows.

“Of course I do, Lucien, but if you work somewhere at your age, it has to be safe. Where _is_ the Sound Garden? Is it a licensed venue?”

“A licensed—? I mean, I guess it … It’s always in the one place, right? So it must have, like, licenses and shit.”

“Who runs it? Who owns it? Who’s going to give you a ride home? I have to know who all these people _are_ before you’re out there late at night,” said Damien, a man who, at Lucien’s age, was regularly sneaking out of his parents’ house to play Riff Raff in the local _Rocky Horror_ midnight show.

“Look, they just need a hand backstage on Friday and Saturday nights. I can find out the rest of that stuff if you want. If I figure it out, about the rides and everything, then I could do it. Right? Please?”

“Well,” said Damien. “Just the weekends? Well. We’ll see.”

——

Shortly thereafter, Robert was doing what he now often did on a weeknight, which was to sit in front of the Discovery Channel and watch the kind of shows that were condemned by professional historians. Damien, thus, was doing what _he_ now often did on a weeknight, which was to complain about that while he sorted through Robert’s kitchen cabinets.

“… I’m sure you wouldn’t be so receptive to this kind of thing if you were familiar with the theoretical underpinnings of the ancient astronaut, which, again, actually reside in the nineteenth century, in colonialist thought, in the idea that Native Americans and Mesoamericans and ancient African peoples could not have actually built their own civilizations, although of course at that time the credit was given to lost Vikings or Welshmen, but when the concept of alien travelers from other planets became more widely understood at the turn of the century, then—Robert, how do you live like this? All you have is condiments. Again. You’re out of tea. I finished it, didn’t I? I’ll …”

Damien then became aware that Robert was not on the couch anymore. Instead, he was standing behind him, close enough for the breath of his words to move the locks of Damien’s hair.

“You give a lot of orders,” he said, his voice warm. “It’s always, ‘Drink some tea.’ ‘Stop watching _Ancient Aliens_.’ ‘Eat a real dinner.’”

Damien laughed.

“I’m used to it. Otherwise, who would—”

Robert touched Damien’s shoulders, turned him gently aside and toward him, and pressed his rough mouth against Damien’s cheekbone. A kiss on the cheek is generally a chaste and quick affair. This, however, was not. Damien was utterly stilled by it, by Robert’s scent and by his nearness.

Robert cupped Damien’s jaw in his right hand, and spoke almost inaudibly.

“You really like that?” he said. “Giving orders?”

“Oh,” said Damien. “I, uh. I …”

“You know what, I don’t think you do.”

This was, he knew, no longer a conversation about household labor. Robert had guessed something about him, something soft and dark and hidden; and he had guessed right. Damien wanted to fall forward. He braced his hands softly against Robert’s chest.

“I think you’d like it if you didn’t have to give the orders,” said Robert. “For once. For a while.”

He traced Damien’s lips with the pad of his thumb; and this, very gently, Damien bit. Robert sucked in a sudden breath.

“Ah,” he said. “Get over here.”

He took Damien by the waist and leaned him against the wall. Damien vaguely realized that the corners of a framed picture were pressing against him, but nothing mattered, nothing registered against the heat and the presence and the pressure of Robert, who rested both his hands against the wall, as if to keep Damien trapped. It was wonderful.

“You want me to do that for you?” he whispered. “Take charge for a while?”

“If … if only you would …”

Words failed. Robert drew his sandpaper cheek against Damien’s own, against his neck, then tasted the skin of his shoulder. Damien shuddered. His nails dug sharply into the muscle of Robert’s back.

“You nervous?” Robert began to unfasten the top buttons of Damien’s flat-fronted shirt. “You feel nervous. What am I gonna do? Eat you?”

“Oh—please—that’s an awful joke, you should be ashamed, I ...”

But he was whispering, tangling his hands into Robert’s curls as Robert gently bit the curve of his ear. He leaned his head against the wall, trying not to smile, and failing.

“You,” said Damien, “are a bad man.”

“Is that what you want?”

“Yes. I mean, no. I mean—“

There was a soft, hot silence then, broken only by the sound of hands rustling against fabric. Robert kissed him, open and taking, as if he knew something deep and terrible about him and loved knowing it. This could, of course, be all an illusion, but it was a very good one. Damien needed to believe, just once more, that someone could come and take what he very badly wanted to give, which was himself.

“Come to bed.” Robert spoke into the hollow of his neck. “You got time?”

This broke the spell. Damien looked at his watch, but he knew the answer already. With a deep sigh, he pushed Robert away.

“Oh, of course I don’t. I’m so sorry.”

“No. No, I understand, you gotta go.” Robert shook himself slightly, standing aside, then added, “I’ll just come over later and break in.”

Damien, who had been buttoning his shirt, was abruptly very still.

“I’m fucking with you,” said Robert. “C’mon, I wouldn’t actually—”

“No, of course not. That would be awful.” Damien traced the line of Robert’s short-bearded jaw with his index finger. “To be alone, in bed, then to find you there, to be suddenly, completely defenseless against you and anything you wanted to do to me ... well. Not that I’ve ever given it any—extensive—thought. At night.”

Robert blinked slowly, then, in one swift movement, grabbed Damien by the thighs and hoisted him up against the wall. Damien cried out in surprise; Robert bit the arch of his neck, then kissed the skin he had bitten.

“Jesus, you’re a long-legged bastard,” he said. “How am I supposed to fit you in my bed?”

Damien rested his face in Robert’s hair.

“Come to mine,” he said, out of breath.

“When?”

Robert’s voice was heavy and dark. He kissed Damien’s collarbone; Damien shut his eyes and bit back the word _now_. With a great effort of will, he said,

“I think—I’ll get the house to myself—on Friday.”

Robert set him gently down, then groaned. He clutched his back at the ribcage.

“Are we too old for this?” he said, rubbing at his muscles. “I can’t throw you up against a wall, and you can’t have a night to yourself unless the kid’s out. Is it worth it? You tell me.”

Damien stroked his forehead, and was about to speak; then he abruptly reached down into his vest pocket and pulled out a square of white cloth.

“Wait. You have my makeup on you.”

“Leave it there.”

Robert took his hand gently away from his face, smiling low, then paused.

“What—is this an actual handkerchief? My _grandfather_ carried these. Get out.”

“Good night to you, too,” said Damien serenely.

He kissed Robert on the cheek and, as ordered, got out, leaving the handkerchief behind him, folded in Robert’s palm.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out I wrote ten thousand words to justify the fact that I wrote the scene at the end of this chapter  
> which is certainly a life choice one can make  
> anyway there will be one more


	5. Three Syllables

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nothing is ever right, and Damien is nervous.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welcome to Good Life Choice Central, where I wrote this about a video game

“… I’m so sorry, the server crashed at closing time _exactly_ , I cannot _believe_ this had to happen tonight, there’s no dinner, I was going to cook, I’m still dressed in my horrible work clothes, it’s pouring, and I’m soaked to the bone. Can we not have _one_ nice thing to ourselves in this—”

“Hey,” said Robert. “Hey.”

The two of them stood in the foyer of Damien’s house, around eight o’clock that Friday night. Betsy was running in great, messy circles from where Robert had set her down. Damien had just thrown his dripping black cane umbrella into the corner.

Then he stood, stilled and hushed, as Robert took one wet lock of his long black hair and gently removed it from the front of his glasses, where the rain had plastered it down.

“I got what I want,” said Robert, “if that helps. I got everything I want right now.”

——

He shouldn’t have let it happen this way. He shouldn’t have let it happen at all. At least, he shouldn’t have let it become an _occasion_. Robert wasn’t a safe man. That was why Damien wanted him so badly, and that was why this was going to _go_ badly, and why it was going to be his fault when—

Alcoholics drank again. That was what they did. When they were at their cleanest and happiest, when they had bright new families or patched-up old ones, they drank again. If Robert didn't do that, he could do something worse; he could pick up some new belief, something from the internet, something truly dangerous. And then what?

——

In the foyer, Robert kissed the rainwater from Damien’s face, then took away his glasses.

“Wait, please, I need—”

“Just cleaning them,” said Robert, wiping the lenses on his cotton shirt, which was more or less dry. Then he set them back on Damien’s face. Damien flushed.

“Oh. That _is_ better. Thank you. ... Do you want to order something to eat, or—”

Robert took his arm at the elbow.

“I _want_ you to relax,” he said, concern soft in his voice. “You’re wound tight. I can see it from here. You know that? … Hey, do you still want this? I could go. I wouldn’t—”

“No,” said Damien, pulling Robert closer, “no, no, no. It’s just—all so much to keep in mind, and I’m … I’m out of plans. I’m not even in dry clothes.”

“Listen,” said Robert. “I thought of what I could give you.”

Damien bit the inside of his cheek.

“I’m certain you did,” said Damien. “You’ve come here for it. The joke tells itself at this point.”

“Well, yeah. Not gonna lie.” Robert grinned. “There is that. But—”

Robert draped his right arm around Damien and walked with him further into the dark house.

“—what I mean is this. I want to give you a night off. I mean, a night off from trying so hard to make everything right. You don’t have to order something. You don’t have to change clothes. You don’t have to try to fix anything for me tonight. Okay?”

Damien stopped and rested his forehead against Robert’s, then settled his arms around the other man’s waist.

“Thank you. I didn’t know if you … thank you.”

After a moment, Robert brushed his lips against Damien’s, and spoke low in his throat.

“Also,” he said, “God help me, but I want to fuck you senseless.”

“Ah,” said Damien.

Robert pulled the knit polyester shirt out of Damien’s khaki waistband and ran his hands underneath his shirt, against his ribcage, against the muscles of his back. Damien gasped at the sensation, the cold of his fingers and the heat of his palms.

“Do you know,” he said, his voice suddenly light, “in terms of pure sincerity, freshness of expression, I think that may be the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.”

“Yeah, well,” said Robert, “it’s about the best I can do in that line.”

He pressed his teeth against one cord of Damien’s rain-damp neck, biting him and kissing him at once.

“You know I never forgot what you were like? You know how much I fucking loved every little sound you made when you were on that couch? Christ, I could have had you right then. Yes,” he hissed, when Damien’s breath caught and he whimpered, “like _that_ , God, yes, you sound good.”

Damien rested a hand on his breastbone.

“Take me upstairs,” he said.

——

A moment later:

“Wait—no! Put me down. Your _back_ , Robert—”

Robert did not need to be told twice. He set Damien down from a bridal carry that had been quite effective on Damien in its way, but had not lasted thirty seconds.

“Right. Right. Was not gonna make it up those stairs. You just said to, and, uh …”

“I meant we should go,” Damien said, taking his arm, leading him to the narrow staircase.

“Anyway, I lost the touch. It’s been too long since I moved a body.”

“Lie to me about that later.”

“I will.”

——

Sometimes terror is glorious and dizzying, and sometimes it is just that: terror. Damien was in love, and Damien was terrified, and neither of these were going to stop being true.

——

In the darkened bedroom, against the wall, Robert kissed Damien as if he might escape, especially when he tried to do just that.

“Wait, wait—I have to go and get undressed—”

“Let me do it.” Robert unbuttoned the fly of Damien’s khakis. “God, I’ve wanted to do it.”

“ _I_ have to do it,” said Damien. His tone was suddenly flat and firm. “Do you understand?”

Robert eased away, lifting his hands.

“Well, no,” he said, “maybe I don’t. But that’s fine. Whatever you need to do. I’ll be here.”

Damien vanished into the master bathroom. Several minutes later, he returned in a loose, dark satin robe, his silken black hair falling across one bare shoulder. He met Robert’s eyes. It would have been more effective, Damien thought, if he could have said something alluring, or anything at all, but his tongue was stilled. It always was, when Robert fixed his gaze. But this look was new: not lust, but something like awe.

“Christ Jesus, look at you,” said Robert, hoarse. “I, uh. I feel. Underdressed, somehow.”

This was, as it happened, literally true. While Robert was alone, he had stripped to the skin. Damien lowered his eyes, stared at the base of the bed. As he spoke, he was fidgeting with the hem of the robe.

“I ... I know the glasses aren’t very attractive—But I can’t sleep in my contacts, and you might as well see, and we talked about, about what I wear at night—”

“Come here, beautiful,” said Robert. He sat down on the bed, pushing aside the crimson sheets. “Come here.”

Damien stepped forward, cautious.

“If I’m not what you wanted,” he said, “if you don’t feel you can—”

“No, no, no, don’t say that—”

Robert reached for him, seized him, pulled him close, pulled at the sash at his waist.

“Let me see you. Oh, God. Oh, Damien.”

He swallowed, then pressed his face against Damien’s breastbone.

“Christ, you’re perfect. Lie down for me.”

——

“What do you want with me?”

Damien asked this in the softest voice he had. He knew his hair was spilled over the pillow behind him; he knew that his eyes were unfocused and dark with his glasses put away; he knew, in short, that he was as seductive as he could make himself, but he did not know if it was enough.

Robert pushed himself up and over Damien.

“I told you,” he said, “I want you to relax. You know how tense you look? I think I could bounce a quarter off you. Damien …”

With the backs of his fingers, he traced a line down Damien’s torso, from the small, flat breasts below the soft cloth bandeau, to his ribcage, to the trail of dark hair down his abdomen. Damien trembled.

“Are you scared of something?”

Damien could not read Robert’s face without his glasses. He did not know what to say when the answer was: _yes. You_.

Robert stroked the line of his neck.

“I think, uh, I think downstairs I came on a little strong. I mean, about the fucking senseless. We don’t have to do that. Don’t want you to do anything you don’t like. I just … I want you to have this. I want this _for_ you.”

Robert leaned forward, then brushed his cheek against the tendons of his neck. Damien’s body began to loosen. He ran his fingers into the deep muscle of Robert’s lower back, felt him harden against his thigh. At that, he craned up and bit Robert’s shoulder. Robert sucked in a sharp breath.

“Oh, I lied,” Robert said. “This is _absolutely_ going to be for me.”

——

And it was this, somehow—not just the promises, not just the kindness, but the absolute inability of this man to be anyone other than who he was—that allowed Damien to relax, and to let the fear leave him.

——

Damien carded the dark curls at Robert’s chest with his fingertips, tracing the blunt lines of his pectorals and luxuriating in his broad abdomen, its slight softness and the muscle beneath. He rose up to take Robert’s nipple in his mouth. Robert gasped, then quickly pulled away.

“Don’t you like that?”

“I fucking love it. But it’s _my_ turn. Okay? Lay back, beautiful.”

He pushed his hands and wrists beneath Damien’s armpits.

“Told you. You don’t have to do anything. I’ll be in charge. —Is that right?” he added.

Damien sighed. He took Robert’s hand, bit the pad of his index finger, then kissed it.

“Of course it is,” he said.

——

Robert fixed him with a deep, penetrating kiss, admitting no doubt as to what he intended to do, and Damien took it inside him with a fierce and biting eagerness. When Robert broke away, he said to Damien,

“You’re too much. You’re too good. You come first.”

“… Yes. Yes, please, if you want …”

Robert bit his earlobe, then spoke directly into his ear.

“I mean after this, too.”

——

“I think maybe—I did all of this—just every single thing for months—to see if I could get you—to stop talking—

As he spoke, he was interrupting himself, kissing Damien’s chest, the nipple beneath the cloth, the edge of his ribcage, the line beneath his navel. He kissed with his teeth, tasting lightly every time.

“Oh, Robert—”

“—just to get you to melt in my mouth—”

“Beloved, I—”

“ _Belovéd_?”

Robert eased farther down the bed.

“Three syllables? Really?”

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I don’t mean to scare you—”

“No, no. I love it. Just, I’ve never heard it said. Three syllables. Mmm.”

He sucked briefly at the soft oblique muscle at Damien’s hip. Damien sobbed aloud.

“Piece of fuckin’ work you are,” he said. “You should marry me. Or maybe you don’t want the tax troubles—”

“ _Robert_!”

As he spoke, he cradled Damien’s cock, which was not like other men’s, and in that way, at least, was exactly like any other man’s. He stroked him carefully, searchingly, found the base of him, found the heart of him, then licked him and sucked him until he sat up, crying and begging, then until he collapsed and was ended.

He rolled over, caught his breath, and reached for Damien’s hand. Damien took it and pulled him up, pulled him to rest on the pillow himself.

“Your turn. If you’ll have me,” said Robert.

——

Later, after Robert left the bathroom, he felt the urge to walk, to bring in the night air. He wandered to the edge of the bedroom and looked at one window, then another.

“These windows are painted shut,” he said. “Remind me tomorrow. I’ll come over with a paint knife and strip them out, make sure you can open and close them. You got any others like this? I could go through the house.”

“I should do it,” Damien said, half muffled by a pillow. “I meant to ...”

Robert returned to bed, and pulled the covers gently away from Damien’s body to climb in beside him. Damien saw his face, and understood what he was trying to say, and that it was something that had nothing to do with paint or windows or even with bedrooms. He reached for Robert’s jawline and cradled it in one hand. Robert covered it with his own.

“Yes,” Damien said, “thank you. Thank you.”

They lay together, foreheads touching, hazel eyes locked to brown, for a long moment. Robert struggled visibly with how much he wanted to say, with how he could manage to speak it aloud. At last, he spoke.

“You son of a bitch,” he said, “you’re no taller than I am. It was the boots. It was always the boots.”

Damien grinned, then turned away, pressing his back against him. He pulled Robert’s left arm around him.

“Go to sleep, you horrible man,” he said in a warm, low voice, and very soon afterward, Robert did.

It would not be long, Damien knew, before he heard his son coming in after work, before the two of them had to explain Robert’s presence in the morning like grown people.[*] It might not be long before Robert said something truly awful, or before he decided he was healthy enough to start drinking again. It might not be long before Damien was sick of trying to raise him. But _might_ offers daylight, and daylight offers a chance.

They slept without dreams, almost without sound, until Betsy found her way upstairs, and lay outside the bedroom door, and cried to be let in, which, after a moment, she was.

 

  


[*] “It was raining very hard last night and Mr. Small decided to stay over.”

“Doesn’t he live, like, three houses down? ... _Oh_. Um, okay. I’m, uh, gonna go. Out. Away. From this conversation.”


End file.
